The current invention relates to an occupant safety system for children and babies. It is presumed here that the child is sitting on an appropriate child seat in the front passenger seat. In this description of the invention xe2x80x9cchild seatxe2x80x9d is also named xe2x80x9cinfant seatxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cbaby seat,xe2x80x9d these are meant to be the same child safety seat.
There has been recently a large amount of active research in the automotive industry to design occupant safety systems for children and babies occupying a child seat in the front passenger seat. Both rear-facing and front child safety seats have yielded fatal risk to infants when crashes occur and airbags have deployed.
Small sports cars with only two seats or standard cab pickup trucks constrain the positioning of the child in front of an airbag. Human errors have occurred frequently while disabling the air bag or forgetting to disable it to accommodate an infant seating in the front. Permanently disabling air bags will certainly discard its benefits for adult passengers that may occupy the front seat.
It is almost a universal standard that babies aged up to one-year-old (weighing under 20 lbs) use a rear-facing seat. A little more than one-year-old kids that weigh at least 20 lbs use a forward-facing child seat. Most forward facing child seats can accommodate children up to 40 lbs or 40 inches in length. Booster seats can accommodate children up to 80 lbs. Adult lap and shoulder belt systems work for children taller than 4xe2x80x29xe2x80x3 and over 80 lbs.
Approximately one quarter of all parents improperly secure children ages 1 to 3 in the passenger seat. Though most of Americans are aware of the risk that air bags pose to infants, 11% continue to place the babies in the passenger seat. In 1996 it was reported that 97 children had died from air bag related injuries in a crash, 18 of those were in child safety seats.
For these reasons, it is very important that a system is designed that will automatically determine whether or not a child seat (occupied or not) is present in the front seat of the car, and if it is the case, the airbag is then automatically disabled.
The present invention provides a child seat detection system that determines the presence of an infant seat and can distinguish between a forward-facing infant seat and a rearward-facing infant seat. The system determines the weight on a vehicle seat and compares the weight on the vehicle seat to a rear-facing infant seat maximum. If the weight on the vehicle seat exceeds the rear-facing infant seat maximum, the system determines whether a forward-facing infant seat is on the seat. If the weight on the vehicle seat does not exceed the rear-facing infant seat maximum, then the system determines whether a rear-facing infant seat is on the seat. The system can be used in the front passenger seat area and can be used at other seating locations of the car where the knowledge of the presence of a child seat might be of benefit or might increase the safety of the infant.
The system detects child seats but more specifically can distinguish rear-facing infant seats from forward-facing infant seats. The system has the ability of detecting the following: whether or not there is a child seat, whether or not a seat is empty, whether or not a child is sitting alone, whether the person sitting is a small or a large adult.
The child seat detection system relies on multiple technologies for accuracy and reliability. Input signals provided by the sensors included: the front seat weight distribution, the rear seat weight distribution, the occupant proximity to the dashboard or to the head board, the lower back location, and a seat belt usage indicator. This device is not meant to encourage parents to place their child seats in any risk region, but it is rather a preventive type of device.